Some couples are able to navigate the various perils of “age-gap” romance and build healthy relationships. But I’m not exactly feeling confident about these particular couples.

The show in question is available on Netflix (or at least one season of it is); it features various sorts of age-gap couples (older women, younger man; older man, younger women; older man, younger man; not sure if there are any lesbian couples). I’m going to have to watch an episode or two.

A NOTE ABOUT THE HEADLINE: Look, I know there weren’t any actual pies featured in the clip, but, come on, these are Brits. Obviously they will be eating pies at some point.

Comments

@Cherubic – I feel like saying “welcome!” but you said you’re not new, so… hello!

About what you wrote, I’m sorry that that happened to you, and I also thought you had a really good analysis:

Anyway, my point is that I don’t think age gaps are strictly bad, in spite of all that. I think that, on the darker end of the spectrum, some can use them to target lonely people like I was. Maybe they’re not even really aware of it, they just took the idea that someone who’s in a relationship should have their life center around you, and vice-versa. I say this because when someone is young and isolated, they’re more likely to idealize their partner, and that sort of attention can be addictive.

I can’t say this with any certainty not living in the United States, but I think I’m feeling the way a lot of southern Democrats do: like Cassandra shouting from the rooftops of Troy that terrible things are on the horizon, but everyone around her just keeps marching towards their own inevitable undoing. And for no other reason than to just spite you. You try talking to them like adults, they throw whataboutisms at you. You counter those, they come up with fresh ones. You get frustrated and call them stupid, they just say “Well, we’ll just march off a cliff twice as fast!”

And the worst part of it is… we’ve already gone through this once. Toronto, we gave the world proto-Trump. And it didn’t learn a goddamned thing! It’s prepared to send his even bigger asshole brother into an even higher office! And for what?! Because Wynne privatized Hydro One? Great, let’s vote in the party that privatizes the shit out of everything! That’ll bring hydro rates down and show those pointy-headed downtown elites, with their “math” and “civic planning” and “compassion for those different from them”.

I ended up voting for Kathleen Wynne strategically (she’s made several mistakes, but maintains my respect as a public figure), as there’s no way in hell the upper-middle class families of Leaside or the old money of The Bridle Path are voting NDP. I don’t hold much hope that she can retain her seat: her PC rival Jon Kieran came by my parents’ place while we were celebrated my stepdad’s birthday (so we let him leave a flyer). He’s styled himself well as a Bill Davis Red Tory, so he won’t offend the sensibilities of the upper crust who want tax cuts, but don’t want to consider themselves monstrous bigots. Now that’s going to be meaningless the minute DoFo gets his hands on him, but it’s got plenty of folks around me convinced just going by the lawn signs around the riding.

God, this election has just really pissed away any faith I had left in the people of Toronto having any kind of political or historical memory. See, that’s my fundamental flaw: assuming people keep up with the same things I do and have the memory I have. They don’t, but they don’t listen to those that do either, either due to cynicism or situational constraints.

But I can’t blame them entirely. The media circling Kathleen Wynne like a pack of vultures, just waiting for the axe to fall so they can pick the carcass clean is just pathetic to watch; the rest of their reporting is all horse-race crap. It’s not like Doug has given them much to work with: he doesn’t even have a costed platform(!), which in a sane universe would be disqualifying in itself, but we’re living in Bizarroworld where the only qualification for high office is not being the “lesbian schoolmarm”. If that’s what the media is reporting, that’s what people are going to believe.

But there was so much they could have said. They could have reminded people that Mike Harris’ irresponsible spending cuts indirectly led to 7 deaths in Walkerton. They could have made clear that Bob Rae actually made impressive gains during a severe recession in the early 90s. But no, it’s all chasing around Doug Ford demanding a platform without saying point-blank “This man cannot be taken seriously as a possible steward of the largest province in the country.” And it’s going to happen again. I got screwed by Tory policies when I graduated high school. Now it’s going to happen again to a new generation of kids. The poorest are going to suffer, you’re going to see a resurgence of LGBT hostility… elections matter and it seems like it’s met with either indifference or lizard-brained “Hate Wynne, want change! Any change good! Vote Ford!”

I feel like I haven’t done enough to stop this. I’ve voted, but I don’t have much more voice than that. I’ve considered volunteering, but I don’t have the time or energy with my day job. My attempts at blogging always fizzle out (plus nobody’ll read it). Twitter is a swamp where it’ll be all talking-point mobs. And frankly, I want to be doing other things anyway (like arting).

*sigh* There’s still 4 days until election day, so maybe I’ll be proven wrong (please prove me wrong, Toronto!), but I’m not hopeful. Turnout is notoriously low for provincial elections, especially in Toronto where everybody’s getting ready for vacations. Incidentally, as I was going for a walk at the park near the Leaside Library, I saw ID-Canada stickers (the Canadian chapter of those anti-immigrant racists in Europe) slapped on bus shelters and public bulletin boards. It’s effin’ starting already!

2) My partner is an Old and it was quite difficult in the first year or so to make everything work and navigate the power differences. We did a good job of dealing with that, and the passage of time has leveled things out a lot anyway. But now we have other age-gap-related concerns, like: Will he have the stamina to put up with the spawn we plan to inflict on the world? Will he live to see them pursue their dreams and support them? Am I going to spend the last 20 years of my life alone and missing his nonsense? So, like, I dunno. Life is complicated.

@Katamount, fwiw would it maybe work for you in terms of time, energy and impact to see if there’s a suitable local group that could use your help for one day/part of the day on the day of the election itself? For going round your own or your nearest marginal neighbourhood door-knocking and getting out the vote for a candidate you think is worth the candle? (I was thinking of this because I feel like I’m in a vaguely comparable situation in terms of time and energy and in my case having precisely 0 reach for campaigning; and this is what my family and I have been doing in recent elections. I just feel it’s a little something on top of my own actual vote, that I can cope with doing). Local to me, at least, they have built up a list of names and addresses of people who they want to remind to vote, or help people physically get to the polling station etc. and they reckon that turnout makes a significant difference so they’re keen for volunteers on the day, regardless of whether you can manage even just a couple of hours, plus they team newbies up with veteran door knockers so you don’t get lost :-). Anyway, just my 2 pence’ worth. Digits crossed for your neck of the woods.

ICE deputy director Thomas Homan will be at the National Press Club on Tuesday morning to participate in an event hosted by the anti-immigrant hate group Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

Homan’s participation comes just days after news that President Trump tapped a CIS fellow, Ronald Mortensen, to serve as assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

“I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”
– Dec. 10, 1993, letter to the late Garrett Hardin, a controversial ecology professor.

“Do we leave it to individuals to decide that they are the intelligent ones who should have more kids? And more troublesome, what about the less intelligent, who logically should have less? Who is going to break the bad news [to less intelligent individuals], and how will it be implemented?”
– Sept. 18, 1996, letter to now-deceased California multimillionaire and eugenicist Robert K. Graham.

The papers in the Bentley Library also show that Tanton has for decades been at the heart of the white nationalist scene. He has corresponded with Holocaust deniers, former Klan lawyers and the leading white nationalist thinkers of the era. He introduced key FAIR leaders to the president of the Pioneer Fund, a white supremacist group set up to encourage “race betterment,” at a 1997 meeting at a private club. He wrote a major funder to encourage her to read the work of a radical anti-Semitic professor — to “give you a new understanding of the Jewish outlook on life” — and suggested that the entire FAIR board discuss the professor’s theories on the Jews. He practically worshipped a principal architect of the Immigration Act of 1924 (instituting a national origin quota system and barring Asian immigration), a rabid anti-Semite whose pro-Nazi American Coalition of Patriotic Societies was indicted for sedition in 1942.

People really, really need to stop dismissing the left’s concerns about fascism and possibly even genocide happening here as incivility and polarized politics.

That’s some scary shit. If they don’t want this “refugee resettlement center” inspected by people of suspect loyalty to the regime, that can mean only one thing: concentration camp.

It might be time to think seriously about leaving the country. Get some sort of plan together for a quick exit. Passport, some funds in a form that can’t be frozen (cash, crypto, offshore accounts, compact valuables, bearer bonds…), and some toiletries and changes of clothes in a bug-out bag packed and stuffed in the closet by the door. If Dems don’t take the House in November, grab that bag and any dependents and head for the nearest port or border crossing. Repugs will, it is clear, let the regime do anything, up to and potentially including killing the First Lady, running concentration camps, and arresting opposition leaders. So a Repug victory in the midterms might as well be the passage of the Enabling Act. The last chance to make the regime even somewhat accountable to the normal rule of law is a blue House in November.

Where I am at the west end of St. Paul’s, Hoskins isn’t running this time, so there’s no incumbent. That makes it a bit more of a toss-up.

On the positive side, while there are some PC campaign signs out (not surprising, there were PC campaign signs out when columnist Sue Ann Levy was running) they’re being massively outnumbered by the NDP signs, at least in my local area.

On the negative side, I’m sure a lot more of central St. Paul’s, which includes Forest Hill, leans more PC.

The frightening part is that of the Ford brothers, Doug seemed to be both the cannier of the two and the meaner. I always got the impression that he was quite willing to wind his brother up and send Rob off at his enemies while staying back himself. In a sense that makes him a bit safer, because he’s less likely to completely ignore all propriety. But it can make him more dangerous in the long run if he can keep playing things under the table well enough. I think he’s trying to be Harper more than Trump, but he doesn’t even manage Harper’s level of charisma.

Which is a long way of saying that his popularity mystifies me as well, and makes me think that it’s all about the same sort of reactionary ‘tear it all down because it’s trying to make me feel bad’ sort of attitude we’re seeing all too much of these days. For people like that, not having an actual costed platform is actually a bonus, because they won’t be pushed to see just how screwed they might be.

The frightening part is that of the Ford brothers, Doug seemed to be both the cannier of the two and the meaner.

This is consistent with what I heard from my father, who has a friend who works at City Hall. His friend told him that while Rob was more affable and had a folksy charm to him, Doug was just a total asshole. To quote Christopher Bird:

If there is a first tragedy in Rob Ford’s life, it is that he would have made a fine landlord or service worker.

I’m in total agreement there.

Which is a long way of saying that his popularity mystifies me as well, and makes me think that it’s all about the same sort of reactionary ‘tear it all down because it’s trying to make me feel bad’ sort of attitude we’re seeing all too much of these days.

That’s a big part of it, that’s for sure. And yet… I still can’t wrap my brain around why people who are so upset with a privatization policy with respect to Hydro One would take out their frustration by electing the party whose hallmark is privatize the crap out of everything because government sucks. I mean, has nobody asked them this question to their faces? Have they successfully compartmentalized these two thoughts? I’m getting flashbacks to “Get Your Government Hands Off My Medicare.”

I said in my earlier post that my fundamental flaw was assuming people keep up with the same things I do and have the memory I have. I’ve expended a considerable amount of mental energy to politics and history… basically since high school. I felt it was a duty to understand the issues in order to be a complete citizen of a functioning democracy, and it’s not something that I felt I could afford to half-ass. And yet… I still don’t consider myself an expert in any of those fields. Perhaps my anxiety means I don’t give myself enough credit, but I can’t help but be reminded of a quote from Charles P. Pierce’s book Idiot America:

In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a scientist, or a preacher, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.

We’ve all seen these people on Twitter go from being deficit scolds one minute to tax scolds the next, all the whole proclaiming Islam to be at war with the west and socialism to be the source of every genocide since Hitler. And I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts they didn’t get these ideas from sitting down at a library and poring over encyclopedias or reading a daily broadsheet. At best, this is a local reactionary newspaper (read: Toronto Sun). At worst, they just watch an Alex Jones clip and parrot the talking points while declaring themselves experts in Islam, economics and political history. And if there isn’t a steady and even source of information… how is the average person working a job (or five) or raising kids and doesn’t have the luxury of time and energy to devote to the ins and outs of fiscal policy to do?

Hell, look no further than the issue of gender. Present a conservative with a trans person and they immediately become genetics experts in time to declare “you are XX or XY!” Similarly, a non-binary person will get the “there are only two genders” rejoinder from the same sudden experts in sociology and biology.

I suppose I’d at least like an ounce of humility from those who are simply ignorant on a subject. I’m not trans, so a lot of the information regarding gender I had to learn from listening to activists, social scientists, and just your run-of-the-mill NB or trans person. By the same token, I’m not a woman or a visible minority, so it’s incumbent upon me to listen to those in minority communities, particularly women, about the issues they face every day. But it’s like this consumer culture demands you to present yourself as an expert in everything, even if you aren’t. But then if you call somebody on their lack of expertise, it only results in a reactionary backlash with accusations of condescension when the obvious option is to just… sit down and listen! Vote for the person who actually takes the time to cost out a plan, even if you don’t have the time or patience to read it! But don’t tell me that I’m economically ignorant while getting upset at Hydro privatization and declaring the solution is to privatize more services.

This went on a bit of a tangent, but trying to pick apart the brains of the right always does this to me.

@Katamount:
I suspect they have successfully compartmentalized all this; they haven’t really gotten farther than ‘government is bad’ and ‘privatizing Hydro made my rates go up, so it is bad’, but without actually generalizing from the latter.

It’s sort of like the rants we would get about ‘atheist muslim’ or ‘fascist commie’. To some people, the words don’t necessarily have any meaning in and of themselves; they’re just bad words, and so the bad people must be them, even if the actual meanings of the words contradict each other.

With regards to trans issues… I ended up in the middle of an awkward conversation with a few friends after we had just seen a movie. One of said friends is transitioning (also ex-military and politically active). Another of said friends was saying how they thought Jordan Peterson had some good ideas. Between my transitioning friend (who had actually read bill C-16) and myself with some of my own legal background, we managed to argue that back by pointing out some of his more explicit fear-mongering. But it’s disheartening to see how people you thought you knew can think of bafflegab as reasonable.

Another of said friends was saying how they thought Jordan Peterson had some good ideas.

Funny thing… I was watching ContraPoints’ video on Jordan Peterson and while Natalie poked several holes in Peterson’s bloviating arguments… this was the response from Peterson fans in her comment section. Like word for word. It’s almost as if it was some kind of face-saving gambit: “Yeah, I’ve internalized his nonsense, but I can’t face up to that mistake, so I’ll just say ‘He’s got some good ideas!'”

About what, posture?

And as you indicated, Peterson fancied himself a law expert and actually wasted the Canadian Senate’s time waxing persecutorial about a law he got wrong. If I had to guess, given his free speech/status quo hobby horse, he probably heard “Amendment to the Ontario Human Rights Act” and thought “Those jerks that harass hard-working people about stupid stuff like ‘microaggressions'” and that was all he needed to charge off on his crusade.

Fortunately the Peterson-defending friend, despite earlier commenting about the levels of bias in those criticizing Peterson, got quiet after both my other friend pointed out that all the bill did was update the list of ‘protected classes’, and I pointed out that ‘hate speech’ laws of any sort don’t actually add new crimes, they just modify how other crimes are treated. Somebody’s not going to get in legal trouble just for using the wrong pronouns unless they do it deliberately and often enough to count as harassment, and that’s rarely an easy thing to prove.

I think some of it came from respecting our opinions more than unknown (even if better-qualified) people on the net. It’s also a bit harder to say something is not really a big issue when an old friend that would be directly affected by the issue is saying otherwise, and going into detail on why.

(Though, honestly, these days, someone calling themselves a ‘classical liberal’ should be a red flag all on its own.)

It’s also a bit harder to say something is not really a big issue when an old friend that would be directly affected by the issue is saying otherwise, and going into detail on why.

Bingo. Which only makes their “freeze peach” martyrdom all the most laughable. Jordan Peterson is not Joseph freakin’ Howe here. Real people with real concerns about employment, housing and finances are affected by discrimination and that kinda takes precedence over some bullshit “compelled speech” scaremongering.

“The post-modern degeneracy… *sniff* It just… it makes me so mad that people don’t understand that this brand of Cultural Marxism has left millions dead….”

“Professor Peterson, you said the same thing last week about jaywalking laws.”

“And it is the West *sniff*… that truly formed the fundamental human right to ignore traffic signals….”

(*snicker* On that note, anybody remember the Incredible Hulk cartoon from 1996? I always thought casting Matt Frewer, aka Max Headroom, as the voice of The Leader was perfect. Nobody can do the combination of ‘arrogant’ and ‘whiny’ the way Frewer did.)

Really, I don’t even care what Peterson’s personal politics are, whether he’s all in or just a useful idiot. He’s long past the point where most people would be saying “Hmm, I seem to be attracting positive attention from self-styled Nazis. Perhaps I should reconsider my life choices.”

Can I just say how much I enjoy your unrepentant use of relatively unknown figures from Canada’s past as comparisons, as though everyone will know who Howe was as much as they do who Churchill was?

Hehe, what can I say, if somebody out there looks up some Canadian history because of me, I feel accomplished. 😀

A co-worker of mine just took his citizenship test (and passed!) and it had me taking a peek at what’s on it… and it’s basically a lot of the stuff middle school students learn in 7th and 8th grade history and 10th grade civics. The average Canadian has probably let most of that knowledge slip away, but something about me finds it important to keep these names and events handy.

Something about this world we live in has me thinking a lot of old history is going to start repeating itself and I see too much of it going down the memory hole….

@Katamount:
Heh. I love bits of Canadian history as well. I consider myself better educated on Canadian history than most; I also consider that a depressingly low bar.

I grew up in British Columbia, which has a long history of weird politics, dating back to people like Amor de Cosmos. (Yes, a local politician actually changed his name to the Spanish for ‘Lover of the Universe’.) I ended up doing some research on the western branch of the CPR for a steampunk story I was writing (for a zine that folded the issue before when my story would have been published). I hadn’t known up until then that Haney wasn’t just a town that I’d lived in when young, it was the name of the guy brought in to try and bring the project back on schedule and under budget. (And almost succeeded, too.)

Granted, I had already known that the town of Oliver was named after the man who helped push through the irrigation project that made the Okanagan Valley the fruit-growing region it is today.

We Hunted the Mammoth tracks and mocks the white male rage underlying the rise of Trump and Trumpism. This blog is NOT a safe space; given the subject matter -- misogyny and hate -- there's really no way it could be.